First Impressions
by LiquoriceLaw
Summary: You never get a second chance to make a first impression.


It was a fairly typical office. A large desk with stacks of paper, some chairs, a view of the city beyond. If it was unusual in any way it was probably because a greater proportion of the walls than is usual was devoted to the view. It was also rather conspicuously lacking a ceiling.

Alexander Gromov shifted in his seat. He hadn't had many job interviews in his life. Once his talent had been recognised in his initial post he had risen easily through the ranks – as long as he kept writing code, creating programmes and fixing problems everything else was taken care of for him. He'd had no incentive to look for other work, even if there had been an alternative to the G-Directorate. But despite his lack of experience, he was fairly sure most interviews weren't conducted by rattling off a series of bizarre and irrelevant questions and then staring at the candidate until they suffered a nervous breakdown.

_I didn't even apply for this job._

"Very well." The Captain's sudden break from silence made the engineer jump. "I will require your phone number."

Where to start? He could remind the Captain that he had already been given it, had been given contact information for all the senior G scientists. He could say that he had no intention of travelling far enough from the Captain for a phone to be necessary. He could point out that, in any case, there were no working phones, thus rendering all phone numbers useless. But all of these arguments would fall on deaf ears, simply because of the owner of the ears' propensity to turn deaf when faced with a statement which opposed his wishes.

He adopted a simpler approach. "No, I'm not giving you my phone number."

The Captain made as if to reply but the engineer cut him off. "We need to get out of here, Seven. Now. ANNET is going to come looking for me."

The Captain waved a hand in a rather vague gesture. "We will not be leaving yet. I am waiting for my other minions."

He ignored the "other" for the time being. "Who are you waiting for? Who else survived?"

"Snippy and Pilot. Mein trusty minions. Zey will be your new friends, Engie."

Snippy? Pilot? What kind of names were those? Were they both job titles? What kind of job did a "Snippy" do? Snippy… wasn't that – the engineer shook his head, his mind running along several tracks at once. Was he seriously going to be referred to as "minion" from now on? What would that entail, exactly?

_Engie?_

Footsteps approached behind him and his head snapped round, fearing a robotic tracker. In fact it was two men, one with green lenses and a breathing tube, the other in a Good-Directorate field jacket and blue goggles. The latter had his arms crossed around his chest, hugging himself, and radiated sheer exhaustion. He seemed on the verge of collapse.

Why did he look familiar?

"Ah, here zey are now!" The Captain waved them over. The engineer turned back to face him and immediately noticed a painting on the wall which he had only glanced at earlier. It showed the man in blue goggles wearing a look of irritation palpable even through his mask and goggles. The picture was labelled "Minion of the Month".

This day just kept getting weirder.

The smaller of the two, the green one in the leather jacket, made a two finger salute, then bounced over to the desk and sat down on the ground next to it. He rested his head against the charred wood and grew still. He may actually have fallen asleep.

"Who's this?" The blue one was looking at Alexander. He sounded distrustful.

"I'm -"

"Zis is our new recruit." The Captain had obviously taken it upon himself to handle introductions. "Pilot, Mr Snippy – meet Engie."

Had he said "Mr" that time?

Never mind. There was a more pressing issue the engineer wanted to address. "I will _not_ answer to "Engie"," he said emphatically, looking the Captain in the eye - or rather, in the goggles. He turned back to the man. "My name is Alexander Gromov."

Immediately he sensed that he had said something wrong. The man's shoulders tensed. The temperature seemed to plummet.

"_You._"

What the statement lacked in edification it made up for in vehemence.

"….have we met?" Something was nagging at the back of his mind, a mental flag which had been raised earlier and which he hadn't had a chance to consider.

"Captain, I'm not working with this scum." The man sounded as though he was restraining the urge to spit.

This was the last straw for the engineer. It had been a stressful day. He hated the sense of not knowing what was going on, the headache that always accompanied dealing with Seven – before he had at least been in charge, even if Seven didn't acknowledge it; he'd been in a position of power, and frustrating as Seven was they were at least learning from him, testing him, cultivating for their own purposes. Now he was at the mercy of the madman's whims, but that didn't mean he had to take this kind of treatment from some wasteland nobody.

"What's your problem?" he shot back. "Wake up on the wrong side of the -"

He never finished the question.

The man launched himself at him and the chair toppled over. His back slammed against the ground, knocking the breath out of him, and before he could recover he was under assault, his attacker landing blows on his mask, his visor, his chest, anything he could hit. The engineer kicked his legs but to no avail; the man had one knee on his chest and one on his arm, pinning him, and he hadn't the strength to push him off. He yelled, but the other didn't even seem to hear him. He was the embodiment of blind rage, insensible to everything but the urge to beat his victim until he passed out from exhaustion. The engineer shielded his head with his free arm and prayed for it to stop.

The barrage didn't last long, although it certainly felt that way. Moving with impressive speed the Captain was behind his assailant and as he raised his fist for another punch he found himself pulled back and jerked upright by it instead.

"Mr Snippy!" the Captain bellowed, "_Explain yourself._"

The man did not reply. Breathing heavily, he yanked his wrist out of the Captain's grip. The movement caused him to stagger and he almost fell; the adrenaline rush over, he had reverted to his earlier state of exhaustion, compounded by the brief but intense workout of a few seconds ago. He put a hand up to his chest, seemingly in pain.

The engineer sat up gingerly, checking to see that nothing was broken. His head was pounding. He rubbed his shoulder and groaned. "What was that -"

Suddenly the pieces slotted into place.

Charles Snippy. One of the miniscule group of employees of the G-cube where Alexander had worked who could not connect to the neural network. The one condemned to such a menial job that he had actually requested a transfer to the D.Z.T.R. The one who had written all those angry reports about ANNET and Project Seven. The one who, towards the last weeks before the apocalypse, had been the subject of several unsavoury rumours concerning a psychosis brought on by stress and lack of sleep…

Now he understood why his had been such a poor choice of goad.

"I know you -" he exclaimed. His voice cracked and he tried again. "I know who you are."

"Bloody right you know who I am." There was a bitter edge to his voice.

The Captain was still glaring at him expectantly. The man in the black and white jacket turned to him, pointing at the supine engineer.

"I'm not working with him. Not again. He didn't just make my life hell, he let the god damn apocalypse happen!" He gestured to the ruins surrounding them. "All this! It's all his fault!"

The engineer swallowed.

"Don't you understand?" his accuser's tone was almost pleading now.

The Captain remained inscrutable behind his mask.

The man - Charles – stared at him for a few more seconds, then let his gaze drop. "You don't understand," he murmured into his chest. "You never will." He sounded resigned, and very tired.

Alexander let his breath out slowly. "_Let it happen_"… he was thinking about how he had phrased his accusation. It occurred to him that there was no reason he should know that the engineer had ordered the tactical strike; he hadn't even been in the city. Alexander had thought he was dead. That meant his anger – his violence – were in retaliation to ANNET and Project Seven alone, to their part in the server failure which had led to the decision to make the strike, even if he didn't know that the engineer had been the one to make that decision. That and the fact that he had always been opposed to ANNET, claiming it was destroying the minds of humanity. And the little issue of not being able to afford sleep. And the personal service drone.

_I'm joining a group with a man who hates me, and who doesn't even know all the reasons he has to hate me. And he specialises in weaponry._

_Здорово._

"Pilot!" The Captain exclaimed suddenly.

"Sir!" He jumped up and saluted eagerly.

"Give Engie his orientation." With these words he wandered away.

"Right away, Sir!" He darted over to the engineer, who felt a little alarmed by his almost manic desire to impart knowledge.

"I'm Pilot," he explained, pointing to himself and apparently forgetting that the engineer already knew their names. "I'm a pilot," he clarified, somewhat unnecessarily. Alexander hadn't been under the impression that he had been christened "Pilot" as a child.

"That's Snippy," he said pointing to the angry one. He didn't sound enthusiastic; the engineer wondered if all the man's crewmates were subject to physical abuse. "He's a sniper." Something occurred to him. "Snippy, you don't have your gun." He sounded annoyed at the man's failure to comply with the information included in the orientation.

The sniper shrugged. "I haven't had _my_ gun since the alien vivisection incident. But I was ambushed by some men with guns before the blood-monster showed up. I'll go back and search the base where they took me."

The nonchalance with which he said all this upgraded the engineer's alarm to panic.

"What about me? What am I supposed to do?"

"You're an engineer," explained Pilot patiently. "You engineer things."

"That isn't really -"

"He's an amoral lunatic," the sniper spoke over him. "And we're better off without him."

The engineer could feel the old annoyance at this man welling inside him. How he'd hated dealing with those reports, the questions to his methods, his motives, even his sanity. The man wasn't an engineer, or a scientist, or even an administrator. He didn't have a doctorate, it wasn't as though he could understand the intricacies of particle physics – he had never understood any of Alexander's work. He didn't have the vision it would require, and why should he? He was just a desk monkey labouring under the delusion that his opinion mattered.

While the engineer and the sniper looked at each other with mutual dislike, Pilot continued his orientation. "And that's the Captain," he said, pointing in the appropriate direction and warming to his topic. "He's our leader and we serve him with our hearts, our souls and our thumbs! He is our messiah, our lord and saviour! He is the ruler of Captania, and he can command the very universe at his will!" He finished his speech, slightly out of breath.

Confused, the engineer looked at him then back at the sniper, who laughed sourly. "Oh, he's serious. If you want to be a good minion just copy Pilot's example. Although he has a tendency to try and bump you off if he thinks you're trying to "steal Captain away from him"."

Pilot seemed angered by this irreverence and stalked off; as he shouldered roughly past the sniper he muttered something about "always watching you."

He went to join the Captain, who had seated himself at a table outside a café and was engaged in an animated discussion with a skeleton. Alexander was left alone with the sniper.

Rather awkward.

Snippy sighed. "I don't believe this."

Alexander looked round but he wasn't looking in his direction. The engineer wasn't sure if he was even being addressed or if the sniper was talking to himself.

"He's made me do some horrible things in my time, but work with you? I think I'd rather be dissected."

Alexander steeled himself. He had a feeling they weren't going to be best of friends, but he wanted to clear the air a little.

"Look -"

The sniper did so, and the engineer quailed under the piercing blue gaze.

"Charles, I -"

"Snippy."

O-kay... apparently they were not on first-name terms. Unsurprising, really, but… how could anyone use the name "Snippy" with a straight face?

Not important right now. Regaining his focus, he made his weaker defence first. "I didn't mean for any of this to happen."

He took in a deep breath.

"And I'm sorry. I can't tell you how sorry I am."

The sniper raised a hand – Alexander flinched automatically, but he was only kneading the centre of his chest again. Apparently he had recently sustained some injury there. The engineer was seriously concerned about what this minion job would involve.

The sniper turned his face away. "That isn't enough."

"I know. But I want you to know that it's true. And that I realise that it's not enough."

There was a heavy pause. "Duly noted." He turned away and followed the others.

After hesitating for a moment the engineer did the same.

What choice did he have?

* * *

He decided he would wait a while before telling him he had been the one to order the nuclear strike.

He would need to break the news gently.

* * *

**A/N Some of this is speculation or may be downright wrong; for example I think Engie knew of Pilot, but not necessarily enough to recognise him right away in person. But I could be mistaken.**

**Let me know your opinions regarding in-characterness.**

**And I should really try writing something that isn't all about these two. A day may come when I do so... but it is not this day.**

**L.L.**


End file.
